Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
Once home, I pause long enough to wash my face and shower, strip off the travel clothes for joggers and a T-shirt, and fling myself face down onto my bed. I press my face into my pillow and force down a couple of deep breaths as if that will restore the inner calm I never had to begin with.
You, I tell myself sternly, are officially and unofficially fucked, and neither is in a good way.
Which is when my phone buzzes on the bedside table. With a groan, I reach over for it and peer at the screen.
You must be home by now and I suggest you stay in for now. Call me
James, naturally. He’s not usually into my business so much.
Which means he’s done the media deep dive, and his sage advice also means it’s got to be terrible.
I resist the urge to look myself up again for at least ten minutes and push my face back into my pillow, feeling the lack of sleep deep in my bones and the stress that has settled over me.
When I’m marginally more ready to face a search, I try yacht news and hold my breath. The page comes up immediately with:
Princes Greek Caper Sinks ￡5 million Yacht
“Fuck.” I suppose that answers the question of how much the yacht was worth.
Followed by another headline:
Prince Theodor of Denmark Causes Shipwreck
“Excellent,” I mutter. Which, I suppose, is better than Stefanos being blamed.
Except—belatedly—it comes to me that if I’m at fault and there’s no insurance cover, how the hell am I supposed to cover that sort of money?
I certainly don’t have it. And I’ll eat my laptop and the rest of the queendom, for that matter, before I ask my mother for that sort of help.
Sitting up with reluctance, I call James before search and rescue is activated again on my behalf. “Hey.”
“The good news,” James begins gravely over the video call, “is that the media coverage of your international yacht—I think they’re widely calling it a caper, actually—has buried the news stories about you and Aidan.”
I groan. “With worse coverage. And I’ve fucked my reputation up even more. How does that actually help me? It’s still a net loss.”
“Did you actually sink the yacht?” He glances quickly at me with great interest.
“I feel like I need a lawyer,” I protest instantly, “before I answer that question.”
James laughs, suitably impressed. “I say, well done.”
“No, no. Not well done. At all. It’s terrible, in fact.” I frown hard at James to reinforce the message, but he’s grinning. “Hey, are you driving? You shouldn’t be calling when driving.”
He waves me off with a hand, the other hopefully on the steering wheel. “I’m on speaker, and my phone is in its holder. And, by the way, I’m headed over. I was just out with Frankie. See you in fifteen.”
I sigh. I don’t know whether to protest or be fucking grateful I have a friend who has my back. In the end, I fall on the side of grateful. “I’ll see you then. I’m going to order in some pizza if you’re hungry too. I didn’t eat on the flight.”
“Perfect.”
When James arrives, the full gravity of the disaster has hit me as I’ve paced back and forth in my living room.
I confirm what James has told me—for the most part, the Aidan stuff has been pushed down on the search results with my latest efforts.
Which I’m going to take as a silver lining in my storm cloud, at least for some distance from Aidan.
Though it’s a negative thousand points for me personally on both the whole new future King situation and my feelings about Stefanos.
Which are going to need to get shoved away like all the others.
Because missing or wanting Stef isn’t helping me or him one bit.
Or remembering how firm his muscled chest was under my hand or the sensation of his lips on mine, and I swear I could feel how hard he was against me when he shoved me against the door before I left.
God, I’m totally doomed.
After James rings through, I buzz him up and open the door as he reaches my landing.
He tuts and gives me a hug before walking in, passing me some beer.
I shut the door behind him as he slips out of his parka, revealing his rugby shirt and jeans.
He puts his shoes neatly aside. I head to the kitchen and set to the business of pouring the ale.
Once we sit on the sofa, James lounges back and puts his feet up on the ottoman. He sips and watches me with great fascination. “Did you call your legal counsel?”
“What? No. Should I?” Alarm rises as I stare at him.
He shrugs. “It depends on what you did. Tell me, and I’ll tell you.”
“I don’t think you’re qualified as either a barrister or solicitor.”
James waves me off like he did over the call in the car. “Semantics, old thing. I can moonlight as your armchair counsel for five minutes. Now, dish.”
I roll my eyes and get straight to the point.
“I, er, distracted Stefanos, who was at the helm because it’s a lot more his yacht than it is my yacht—obviously, not my yacht at all—and we very accidentally sailed into a reef at full speed.
A reef, by the way, which has no business being out on the open water.
Which, incidentally, should be deep. I don’t know what nature was thinking.
I mean, if you ask me, it’s the reef’s fault. ”
“Mm. For future reference, coral polyps do love shallow waters, and they hang out there for a very long time to make a reef, so you weren’t on the wide-open seas.” James looks like he’s weighing out his advice. His attention is rapt.
“How do you even know that?” I look at him, aghast.
“I sail occasionally. And, by the way, they teach us to avoid reefs.”
“Right. Okay. Also, I’m not sure how I feel about you using the word polyp in my home.”
James shrugs, and then unrestrained curiosity crosses his face in a way that makes me nervous. “And how, exactly, did you distract the captain?”
“Well, before your mind heads south, we were having a very respectable conversation about my royal future, and he wasn’t watching the GPS, and we hit the reef.”
“Just like that?” James looks skeptical. “Also, you shouldn’t only rely on the GPS when you’re in shallow waters.”
I gesture expansively before reaching for my ale again. “I don’t know anything about GPS or shallow waters.”
“The point is, either way, he should have been paying attention as the captain. And we all know you’re very fascinating when you want to be.”
Shaking my head, I snort. “Hardly. I was minding my own business and…” Then I falter, remembering how Stefanos looked in the moment, with all his attention focused on me.
His expression soft and open, as if what I said or did truly mattered to him, as if it were something important. Something worth listening to.
“And?” James prods.
“And I nearly kissed him,” I confess at last. If I can’t tell James, who can I tell? “Except I didn’t have time to do that before we struck the reef. Most everything else you can see online, after that.”
“I did catch the rescue. Very dramatic.”
“Of course you did.”
James peers at me. “I didn’t know you and Stef were in a kissing sort of place.”
“We’re not.” I cough, doing my best to cover before James cross-examines me like he’s missed his calling as a lawyer. “And we won’t ever be.”
Another tut from James. “A true shame. I thought you might hit it off for a quick fling.”
“Well, we’re much better at hitting reefs than each other, what can I say?
Bar collisions aside.” My face warms. If only we had ended up tangled in Stefanos’ bed instead of what happened.
Everything would be a secret, and nobody would even know except Stef that I’d gone to Greece, and we would have been up a hot few days together in Kerkyra despite January’s chill.
James laughs with delight. “Misplaced priorities, I’m afraid. What a missed opportunity. Instead, you’ve made quite the incident together.”
“Yeah, well. So. Now I’m here. Trying to get my bearings again.” I give him a meaningful look. Then the pizza arrives, and we set to the important business of eating. At least that keeps him from asking more questions about Stefanos and me.
After some loaded pepperoni pizza, James gives me a significant look across the table. “So, speaking of the present, that’s why I’m here.”
“Aside from the free pizza and my company?”
“You now need to do some serious damage control.”
I groan. “Don’t remind me. I’m trying to enjoy my meal.”
“After I saw what I saw online, I took the decision to step forward the plan,” James informs me with authority.
“Plan?” I ask with alarm. I set my half-eaten pizza slice down on the plate. “What plan? There is no plan.”
James solemnly raises a hand to stop me like he’s directing traffic around a diversion. Then, he taps on his phone. “There is, in fact, a plan. Which I’ve very kindly made for you. I’m sending you the itinerary right now.”
“James, I’m not planning on more trips anytime soon if I can help it.”
“You’re not going far. Just look at your schedule, please. In fact, it would be shockingly rude not to.”
“Okay, fine.” Reluctantly, I pick up my phone and open his message. There’s an itinerary, as promised, labeled Plan for Theo like I’m some kind of project. Taking a deep breath, I open it. The first line reads: Date #1, Martin @ Soul. Followed ominously by Tomorrow, 7pm.
I blink and lower my phone. “What is this?” I demand.
James grins broadly, obviously pleased with himself, and my alarm grows.
“I don’t think I want to know who Martin or Soul are,” I inform him.
“Martin is a very nice friend of a friend, and Soul is a fabulous London restaurant you must be seen at. And where you will meet Martin for dinner. Perfect optics. You’re welcome.”
The groan comes unbidden. An air-deflating sort of groan, the sound of my rapidly deflating spirits.
“Operation Fake Dating begins,” James declares, “because frankly, you need all the help you can get right now.”
“You need a way more secret project code name than that. And no. We joked about it before, but I can’t see how this is any kind of good idea.”
“It’s a brilliant idea,” James assures me without an iota of hesitation, as if he’s a master matchmaker, something he’s wildly unqualified for. “Believe me. And he’s a mate of Frankie’s, so he comes prescreened, don’t worry.”
I give him a suspicious look. “And who, exactly, is Martin?”
“Martin McDonald-Wise. A banker from a very respectable family.”
“James. Of all the kinds of boring people out there you could choose from.”
“Bankers, I’m afraid, need fake love too.” James nods with purpose. He sits back in his seat. “Just like you do. Nothing could go wrong. Tomorrow. You’ll see.”